Local Korean War veteran travels to D.C. for armistice anniversary

CHARLESTOWN — Andrew Viscuso never had time to learn his commanding officer’s name.

“I was told I was going to be put in the 24th (Infantry) Division,” the 85-year-old Korean War Army veteran said Sunday. “I only lasted seven days before I was captured.”

“To me, that’s too fast,” Viscuso said quietly in a voice that is regularly vibrant.

Following a forced three-month march, Viscuso remained in Camp Changsong for 2½ months as a prisoner of war.

Sixty years after the armistice that effectively ended the Korean War and his life behind barbed wire, Viscuso gathered with other POWs and Korean War veterans in Washington, D.C., near the Korean War Memorial Saturday and listened to President Barack Obama speak in their honor.

“Here in America, no war should ever be forgotten, and no veteran should ever be overlooked,” Obama said, adding that Korea veterans “deserved better” than being relegated to the annals of history as participants in what is commonly called, “The Forgotten War.”

“You can’t feel too good,” Viscuso said about the conflict he was a part of being “forgotten.”

One thing that Viscuso repeated several times was the memories getting together with the other veterans brought back. Viscuso and many other men and women will never forget their time on the other side of the world between 1950 and 1953.

He remains proud of what they did, helping to keep the people of South Korea free and democratic.

Drafted in 1950, Viscuso landed in Korea in 1951 and was part of a unit assigned to hold a particular hill.

A week into his tour of duty, Viscuso said he was heading up the hill to take up a position when he saw a friend from home, Bobby Benyo, returning down it after fighting at the top.

“I said, Oh, Bobby, good to see you,’” Viscuso said. “‘How is it up there?’”

“It’s hell,” Benyo said. “Be careful.”

“He went his way and I went my way,” Viscuso said.

Dug in at the top of the hill, Viscuso said his experience became nightmarish in the dark.

“We just heard all kinds of bugle calls,” he said. “It sounded like a beat-up bugle, not like we have, not like a trumpet or anything. In the middle of the night in the dark, it’s scary as hell.”

At that point, Viscuso’s sergeant informed him that they were cut off from the rest of their squad.

Viscuso and other men were forced to march north to Camp Changsong, moving only at night to avoid air cover from the United Nations’ forces.

A man marching couldn’t keep any food down and got weaker as time went on, so Viscuso and a friend constructed a stretcher so they wouldn’t leave him behind. Together, they carried him during the marches.

“One night, when we rested, we put him down and he was gone,” Viscuso said. “We looked all over for him. I don’t know what happened to him, whether he died, whether they took him because he couldn’t walk and we were carrying him...”

Viscuso never got the soldier’s name.

“He was from Ohio,” Viscuso said. “If there’s anything I could do to find out his name ... just to let his family know...”

Treatment in the camp wasn’t much better than the march, according to Viscuso, who said the food was terrible and caused them to lose POWs from malnutrition.

For his suffering, Viscuso received a Purple Heart.

Six decades later, Viscuso said he loves getting together with the other POWs, trying to meet at least once a year in various cities across the country.

“These are your true friends,” he said. “We will always be together.”

For the 60th anniversary of the armistice, the group decided to go to Washington, D.C.

“Before we knew it, there was a group of officials who decided to have a commemoration and we just happened to be there with an invitation from them,” Viscuso said.

“Perhaps the highest tribute we can offer our veterans of Korea is to do what should have been done the day you came home,” Obama told the veterans gathered.

Viscuso credited his son, Greg, with helping make sure he could get to the event and get around. Viscuso’s wife, Helen, also came along.

Remembering the original dedication of the Korean War Memorial, July 27, 1995, Viscuso said many Koreans were in attendance and showed their appreciation for the conflict which was then about 40 years past.

To go along with his Purple Heart, Viscuso said he was presented with a medal made from the barbed wire which once held him in the prison camp.

“It has a special meaning,” he said.

He said he admires the Koreans he fought for and the fact that his conflict doesn’t get a lot of recognition doesn’t matter because of that.

“I don’t look for notoriety,” Viscuso said. “I was just happy that I could do what I could. I was happy we kept them free. They’re wonderful people.”